This session was taken up with the Holocaust. We watched the chapter "Genocide" from the British series "The World at War" and for a consideration of the possibility of reconciliation I played a short piece from NPR's Sunday Morning Edition. This was a story about the 50th anniversary of the treaty between Germany and France and the visit to Goettingen by Barbara, a celebrated French Jewish singer. She hid during the war and survived. She accepted an invitation to visit Goettingen with much trepidation. But the warm reception and her realization that a new generation of German's was growing up touched her. She wrote a song about Goettingen that became a huge best-seller in both France and Germany.
I think the kids were stunned by the movie. There was silence after it ended and they had no enthusiasm to go immediately for bagels (which is what they usually want to do after the first hour of class). So we talked a bit about the movie and I played the NPR segment. It was hard to get a discussion going. I provided some details about the decision to exterminate the Jews and tried to convey to them that the Final Solution was not just another pogrom, it was something new and horrible. It was the first time that a definition of being a Jew turned on blood, racial inheritance that could not be altered by any personal actions or choices. I also told them that a number of important Nazis were tried and executed for war crimes by the Allies. When we turned to a discussion of reconciliation and healing, again discussion was difficult. No one, I think, had much interest in forgiveness, which is perfectly understandable. On the other hand I think some may have found it difficult to express themselves on this profound issue. I brought up the analogy of South Africa once Nelson Mandela came to power, but they didn't know much about it.
I don't want to spend that much time on the Holocaust. I think it has been enormously over emphasized, as if the Jews had only a twelve year history and we were defined by the Nazi attempt to exterminate us. We will return to some of this when we get to the history of modern Israel for the Holocaust plays a crucial role in the international decision to allow a Jewish state. The Holocaust is, in my opinion, something that has to percolate for there to be understand.
Next week we'll return to the preparations for the B'nai Mitzvah celebration.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Our blogging has fallen behind. Let me tell you what we did last Sunday (January 27th). In addition to having the B'nai Mitzvah-nics present their Bible stories and get some suggestions -- in general they all need to flesh out the stories and add some a) interpretation to the story and b) explain what it means to them. We'll provide a few suggestions for the former and you can help them find just what they want to say about the latter.
We watched a video of the 2009 B'nai Mitzvah ceremony to give the kids a visual taste of what their own celebration would be like. I don't think they had previously seen themselves, in imagination, up on the stage presenting their work to the community. It was very useful to see the video.
The class decided to do their social action project as a group and focused on the issue of gun violence. This has a lot of interesting aspects and we are beginning to find out 1) which organizations/groups, locally and nationally, are concerned with gun violence so the project will not just be the kids sending a letter to their senator. We will be able, perhaps, to link up with one of the anti-gun groups; 2) find out the extent of gun violence, i.e. the number of shooting in schools and the number of shootings of children especially every year; 3) we talked about the possibility of introducing the discussion in their own schools in the wake of Sandy Hook, but no decision was taken; 4) one of the kids is also going to find out about the NRA and what arguments are advanced in favor of owning guns, including assault weapons and what is the current status of the anti-assault weapons law that was allowed to expire a few years ago.
Although much of this will be done in class by the entire group, you might want to get involved in this critical issue. A classroom suggestion is for us to watch the movie Bowling for Columbine. None of the kids knew much about this first of the school shootings and none of them had seen the movie. This would be a good opportunity for the parents to get involved with us. I'll write you separately about seeing the movie.
We watched a video of the 2009 B'nai Mitzvah ceremony to give the kids a visual taste of what their own celebration would be like. I don't think they had previously seen themselves, in imagination, up on the stage presenting their work to the community. It was very useful to see the video.
The class decided to do their social action project as a group and focused on the issue of gun violence. This has a lot of interesting aspects and we are beginning to find out 1) which organizations/groups, locally and nationally, are concerned with gun violence so the project will not just be the kids sending a letter to their senator. We will be able, perhaps, to link up with one of the anti-gun groups; 2) find out the extent of gun violence, i.e. the number of shooting in schools and the number of shootings of children especially every year; 3) we talked about the possibility of introducing the discussion in their own schools in the wake of Sandy Hook, but no decision was taken; 4) one of the kids is also going to find out about the NRA and what arguments are advanced in favor of owning guns, including assault weapons and what is the current status of the anti-assault weapons law that was allowed to expire a few years ago.
Although much of this will be done in class by the entire group, you might want to get involved in this critical issue. A classroom suggestion is for us to watch the movie Bowling for Columbine. None of the kids knew much about this first of the school shootings and none of them had seen the movie. This would be a good opportunity for the parents to get involved with us. I'll write you separately about seeing the movie.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Sunday, Dec 16
Today, we wrote our This I Believe essays. The students have all chosen things they believe in--ranging from friendship to creativity to music, and they have put their ideas into words, using examples from their own lives to prove the importance of their beliefs. Today, everyone finished rough drafts of their essays and updated them onto their blogs, so you can check out your kid's work on their blog page. I need to update the link to Auggie's page, but everyone else's should be visible.
We have 3 weeks off and don't have class again until Jan 13. Enjoy the break! Please make sure your child has completely their Wisdom of the Guides interviews by the 13th so we can edit the audio clips together. If you are having trouble with the audio, please let me know and I'll help and if you need help with how to get the audio from your device to me, just bring the device (iphone or whatnot) in and I'll help with the technology side. I would really like it if we can make the final ceremony multi-media, and one way I think this would work well is with the interviews, so that during the ceremony, we can actually hear the advice right from the mouths of those who gave it. And the kids will talk about why that advice is important to them. Anyway, lots of rambling. The key is to get the interviews finished by the 13th.
When we come back in January, we'll be focusing on our last 3 projects: Bible story analysis, research paper and the social action project. I am also working to plan a day sometime in January or February where parents could join us for class and we could make challah and discuss what we've been doing and what we'll be doing coming up. I'll get more details to you about that soon.
Questions, comments can come my way, as always.
Becca
We have 3 weeks off and don't have class again until Jan 13. Enjoy the break! Please make sure your child has completely their Wisdom of the Guides interviews by the 13th so we can edit the audio clips together. If you are having trouble with the audio, please let me know and I'll help and if you need help with how to get the audio from your device to me, just bring the device (iphone or whatnot) in and I'll help with the technology side. I would really like it if we can make the final ceremony multi-media, and one way I think this would work well is with the interviews, so that during the ceremony, we can actually hear the advice right from the mouths of those who gave it. And the kids will talk about why that advice is important to them. Anyway, lots of rambling. The key is to get the interviews finished by the 13th.
When we come back in January, we'll be focusing on our last 3 projects: Bible story analysis, research paper and the social action project. I am also working to plan a day sometime in January or February where parents could join us for class and we could make challah and discuss what we've been doing and what we'll be doing coming up. I'll get more details to you about that soon.
Questions, comments can come my way, as always.
Becca
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Class on 12/02
Hi, everybody!
We had such a fun class today preparing for our Hanukkah presentation for the service next week. I don't want to give away too many details, but expect to see a great show next week. Today during class, I realized how great all the students are going to do with the final ceremony in June. Everyone was confident, they were using presenter voices and they were excited about what they were doing. I'm confident you'll see all that next Sunday.
Almost everyone still has at least something left to do with Wisdom of our Guides--some more than others. Please make sure your child gets that finished and gets me the digital recordings.
Have a great week and I'll see you next Sunday.
Before then, I'll be sending out the script for our presentation because the students wanted it to look over before next week and a list of what each student said they could bring for props (things like pink shirt and funny glasses. Nothing they should have to buy. Everything should be things students said they already had.)
Becca
We had such a fun class today preparing for our Hanukkah presentation for the service next week. I don't want to give away too many details, but expect to see a great show next week. Today during class, I realized how great all the students are going to do with the final ceremony in June. Everyone was confident, they were using presenter voices and they were excited about what they were doing. I'm confident you'll see all that next Sunday.
Almost everyone still has at least something left to do with Wisdom of our Guides--some more than others. Please make sure your child gets that finished and gets me the digital recordings.
Have a great week and I'll see you next Sunday.
Before then, I'll be sending out the script for our presentation because the students wanted it to look over before next week and a list of what each student said they could bring for props (things like pink shirt and funny glasses. Nothing they should have to buy. Everything should be things students said they already had.)
Becca
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Turning Points: The Dreyfus Affair
We talked about the famous Dreyfus Affair today, beginning with the single piece of evidence that set off that infamous event and the vast Affair it spawned in France. The evidence involved is the so-called bordereau (literally a note), a single piece of paper with a list of military items, especially the then secret 120 mm gun. It was found in a waste basket in the German Embassy in Paris and delivered to the Statistical Section (the French CIA of the day) by a cleaning woman who spied on the Germans for the French. The Statistical Section made a couple of false assumptions (that it had to have been written by a member of the General Staff and that he was an artillery officer). They then arrested Alfred Dreyfus, a model soldier and the only Jewish member of the General Staff. The army at the time was aggressively Catholic and antisemitic. From this document, worthless in a court of law (it was undated, unsigned, and its recipient was not mentioned) followed by an illegal arrest and interrogation, came the famous Affair.
Dreyfus was convicted by a secret military court who received a secret envelope containing the bordereau and a few other pieces of equally dubious evidence, none of it demonstrably connected to Dreyfus. Dreyfus was never shown this evidence and the military court accepted its authenticity on the word of General Mercier, the senior French general of the day. Dreyfus was then publicly degraded, having been already tried and convicted in the antisemitic press, and sent to Devil's Island.
I tried to impress on the kids the difference between civilian and military courts (Mark Sigunick was in class and explained this) and how the subsequent cover-up by the military, the virulence of the press, and the pusillanimity of the government perpetuated the injustice. I also stressed that when the case finally got into a civilian court the military was curbed and Dreyfus was ultimately pardoned. The rule of law prevailed. I mentioned in passing -- and will return to this in a future lesson -- that Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was a reporter sent to cover the famous case. He witnessed Dreyfus's degradation and this served as the seed for his insistence that Jews must have a homeland. If a Secular Jew (and so was Herzl) could be condemned and illegally convicted in France, the home of the Rights of Man, then no Jew, however assimilated, was safe from persecution.
We also talked about howthe utterly unexpected interventions in the course of the Affair not only kept it alive but eventually brought about Dreyfus's exoneration. Colonel Piquart, himself an ardent Catholic and professed antisemite, was the first to discover that the handwriting on the bordereau was not Dreyfus's. When he blew the whistle his army superiors sent him on a tour of North African army outposts. When the greatest novelist of the day, Emile Zola, published his J'Accuse in the daily paper L'Aurore, excoriating the generals, it caused a sensation.
We also talked about the lessons of the Dreyfus Case: the inherent balance of military courts in favor of the army, the virulence of the mass press (especially the antisemitic press), the fact that a weak government let the army run amok, that the rule of law eventually prevailed, and how Dreyfus himself chose to play down the antisemitic aspects of his ordeal, putting his faith in the laws of the land and the essentially honorability of the army.
Our next lesson will be on the origins of Zionism and the early years of a then hoped-for Jewish state.
We talked about the famous Dreyfus Affair today, beginning with the single piece of evidence that set off that infamous event and the vast Affair it spawned in France. The evidence involved is the so-called bordereau (literally a note), a single piece of paper with a list of military items, especially the then secret 120 mm gun. It was found in a waste basket in the German Embassy in Paris and delivered to the Statistical Section (the French CIA of the day) by a cleaning woman who spied on the Germans for the French. The Statistical Section made a couple of false assumptions (that it had to have been written by a member of the General Staff and that he was an artillery officer). They then arrested Alfred Dreyfus, a model soldier and the only Jewish member of the General Staff. The army at the time was aggressively Catholic and antisemitic. From this document, worthless in a court of law (it was undated, unsigned, and its recipient was not mentioned) followed by an illegal arrest and interrogation, came the famous Affair.
Dreyfus was convicted by a secret military court who received a secret envelope containing the bordereau and a few other pieces of equally dubious evidence, none of it demonstrably connected to Dreyfus. Dreyfus was never shown this evidence and the military court accepted its authenticity on the word of General Mercier, the senior French general of the day. Dreyfus was then publicly degraded, having been already tried and convicted in the antisemitic press, and sent to Devil's Island.
I tried to impress on the kids the difference between civilian and military courts (Mark Sigunick was in class and explained this) and how the subsequent cover-up by the military, the virulence of the press, and the pusillanimity of the government perpetuated the injustice. I also stressed that when the case finally got into a civilian court the military was curbed and Dreyfus was ultimately pardoned. The rule of law prevailed. I mentioned in passing -- and will return to this in a future lesson -- that Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, was a reporter sent to cover the famous case. He witnessed Dreyfus's degradation and this served as the seed for his insistence that Jews must have a homeland. If a Secular Jew (and so was Herzl) could be condemned and illegally convicted in France, the home of the Rights of Man, then no Jew, however assimilated, was safe from persecution.
We also talked about howthe utterly unexpected interventions in the course of the Affair not only kept it alive but eventually brought about Dreyfus's exoneration. Colonel Piquart, himself an ardent Catholic and professed antisemite, was the first to discover that the handwriting on the bordereau was not Dreyfus's. When he blew the whistle his army superiors sent him on a tour of North African army outposts. When the greatest novelist of the day, Emile Zola, published his J'Accuse in the daily paper L'Aurore, excoriating the generals, it caused a sensation.
We also talked about the lessons of the Dreyfus Case: the inherent balance of military courts in favor of the army, the virulence of the mass press (especially the antisemitic press), the fact that a weak government let the army run amok, that the rule of law eventually prevailed, and how Dreyfus himself chose to play down the antisemitic aspects of his ordeal, putting his faith in the laws of the land and the essentially honorability of the army.
Our next lesson will be on the origins of Zionism and the early years of a then hoped-for Jewish state.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
November 11, 2012
November 11, 2012
First, announcements:
- We have gotten off track a little with the original due date sheet I sent out. I want to update some of those and I will have a new paper printed out for next week.
- Family Roots papers need to be finished (most students are done or almost done after class today) and posted onto the blog before next class, Nov. 18. Auggie and Lucas have already posted, so they don't need to do anything further with this.
- Wisdom of the Guides interviews are not due on Dec. 2 so that everyone has more time to meet with or get ahold of people who might not live close to you. Each student needs to write a paragraph after each interview summing up what guidance they got from the person they interviewed.
- This I Believe we started talking about today in class. We will explore it more next week and write them on Dec 2 and Dec 9. This isn't something the students have to do anything with until after they turn their family roots in next week.
- Bible study we are going to go over through December.
These updates with the schedule should keep us on schedule to spend as much time as we need/want to on each topic and project.
Today in class, we started with a discussion with David Jordan about historically, what made someone Jewish during different parts of history. We discussed how that distinction affected someone's life greatly and what choices they did and did not have in regards to what religion they were treated as. He will post with a much more articulate description than this short bit about his presentation.
For the second half of class, we worked on finishing our Family Roots projects. Most everyone is either done or on the very last parts. Callie found sound fascinating new information for hers. It is amazing when you find something that is over 100 years old that tells so much of your history and the thoughts that went into important decisions for your family.
Next week, we will share our Family Roots projects with each other and begin learning about This I Believe. Students started brainstorming things they believed in today during our bagel break. Ask your child what he/she decided he/she believes in.
See you all next week.
Becca
First, announcements:
- We have gotten off track a little with the original due date sheet I sent out. I want to update some of those and I will have a new paper printed out for next week.
- Family Roots papers need to be finished (most students are done or almost done after class today) and posted onto the blog before next class, Nov. 18. Auggie and Lucas have already posted, so they don't need to do anything further with this.
- Wisdom of the Guides interviews are not due on Dec. 2 so that everyone has more time to meet with or get ahold of people who might not live close to you. Each student needs to write a paragraph after each interview summing up what guidance they got from the person they interviewed.
- This I Believe we started talking about today in class. We will explore it more next week and write them on Dec 2 and Dec 9. This isn't something the students have to do anything with until after they turn their family roots in next week.
- Bible study we are going to go over through December.
These updates with the schedule should keep us on schedule to spend as much time as we need/want to on each topic and project.
Today in class, we started with a discussion with David Jordan about historically, what made someone Jewish during different parts of history. We discussed how that distinction affected someone's life greatly and what choices they did and did not have in regards to what religion they were treated as. He will post with a much more articulate description than this short bit about his presentation.
For the second half of class, we worked on finishing our Family Roots projects. Most everyone is either done or on the very last parts. Callie found sound fascinating new information for hers. It is amazing when you find something that is over 100 years old that tells so much of your history and the thoughts that went into important decisions for your family.
Next week, we will share our Family Roots projects with each other and begin learning about This I Believe. Students started brainstorming things they believed in today during our bagel break. Ask your child what he/she decided he/she believes in.
See you all next week.
Becca
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
October 28
We spent Sunday focusing on our Family Roots projects. We are at the point where we have chosen the things we think are most important, interesting and unique about our families and we are putting them together into the actual paper.
Unfortunately, I brought the wrong keys and forgot the set that has my flashdrive with the students' paragraphs on it, so we started off at the next paragraph so we can put them all together next class. So far, we have found out lots of interesting things about our family histories. We have small families, huge families, families that came over in the early 1900s and someone who is thought to be the first Mayflower rider to set foot of Plymouth Rock.
We are going to spend 1 more class period working in class on the Family Roots essays and if anyone still needs to finish after that, we will need to finish outside of class.
Also right now, students are working on their Wisdom of the Guides interviews. Since they are a bit overwhelmed about it, I suggested that over the next 2 weeks, they choose the 2 easiest interviews to get done. Also, as the students have marked in their binders, I have moved the due date back to Dec 2. That way, if someone wants to interview a family member who they will see over Thanksgiving, that is a possibility.
As always, send questions and concerns my way.
Becca
Unfortunately, I brought the wrong keys and forgot the set that has my flashdrive with the students' paragraphs on it, so we started off at the next paragraph so we can put them all together next class. So far, we have found out lots of interesting things about our family histories. We have small families, huge families, families that came over in the early 1900s and someone who is thought to be the first Mayflower rider to set foot of Plymouth Rock.
We are going to spend 1 more class period working in class on the Family Roots essays and if anyone still needs to finish after that, we will need to finish outside of class.
Also right now, students are working on their Wisdom of the Guides interviews. Since they are a bit overwhelmed about it, I suggested that over the next 2 weeks, they choose the 2 easiest interviews to get done. Also, as the students have marked in their binders, I have moved the due date back to Dec 2. That way, if someone wants to interview a family member who they will see over Thanksgiving, that is a possibility.
As always, send questions and concerns my way.
Becca
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